Australian Institute of Marine Science – Long-term monitoring Program: Visual Census Fish Data (Great Barrier Reef)
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Overview:
Data description: http://www.vliz.be/en/imis?module=dataset&dasid=4035
(See also Sweatman et al. 2008 Long-term Monitoring of the Great Barrier Reef status report No. 8)
Dataset link: http://www.iobis.org/mapper/?dataset=233
Direct download: OBIS Web Service
Initial issues
Scale. Data downloaded from IOBIS has unique lat-longs which are presumably reef-level data. In theory, there are 5 transects within each reef, but no sub-site identifiers are obvious. (No reef identifiers either, just latlongs.)
Description mentions that ~200 species are monitored in specific groups/families. Unclear what fraction of total diversity this represents.
At least one site had ~50 species observed per year which seems to be an unusually large fraction of total GBR richness.
Although methods indicate all species were counted, no abundance data are included. (All entries list '0' individuals in each row.)
Miscellaneous
140 reefs have at least 9 years of data.
Data collection began 1992.
Maximum year in the version downloaded 3/20/2014 is 2006, but data have been collected every other year since 2005 (so more data to be requested).